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Intel’s Haswell is an exciting chip. Last IDF, we covered the CPU’s features and specifications last fall, including its vastly improved cache bandwidth, new transactional synchronization extensions, and lower TDP targets. At the time, we speculated that the combination of features could significantly improve performance in both desktop and mobile configurations.

Tom’s Hardware has published an unofficial preview of Haswell’s performance based on early silicon that confirms much of what we expected. It’s clear that the chip isn’t performing quite as well as it should be — its AES256 performance and memory bandwidth are both 15-20% lower than they ought to be, and all the usual caveats apply about early BIOS’s and drivers.

The new top-end CPU is the i7-4770K with a 3.5GHz base clock, 3.9GHz maximum Turbo clock, 84W TDP (up from 77W on the i7-3770K). This chip — and, apparently, all of Intel’s desktop chips — use the GT2 GPU configuration with 20 execution units rather than the GT3 configuration with an integrated frame buffer that Intel talked up at IDF. Intel will apparently sell GT3-equipped desktops, but only in a non-upgradeable BGA configuration.

Performance

Real-world performance benchmarks in existing code point to a 7-12% clock-for-clock improvement for Haswell over Ivy Bridge. That’s directly in line with our expectations of 10-15%. GPU performance figures swing rather dramatically depending on resolution and the game in question; Haswell is 18% faster than Ivy Bridge in Hitman at 1366×768, but 50% faster in DiRT 3 at the same resolution. 1920×1080 gaming remains out-of-reach in almost every title.

Image courtesy of Tom’s Hardware

Does it deliver the 25-40% improvement in graphics performance that we thought it could? Allowing for early drivers and game-to-game variation, it looks like it might, though we expect Haswell will hit the lower end of that range overall. The mobile performance kick will be more significant — the 40 execution cores in GT3 combined with an on-die frame buffer could still kick Haswell above anything AMD fields in that segment.

The strangest thing about Intel’s Haswell positioning is THG’s assertion that only certain chips will have transactional synchronization extensions (TSX) support. Their chart indicates that the i7-4770K and i5-4670K — the two enthusiast-oriented processors — won’t have TSX support. That’s frustrating, to put it mildly. It’s a return to the Bad Old Days of a few years back, when Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipsets forced enthusiasts to choose between Intel’s QuickSync technology and CPU overclocking. The Z68 chipset fixed that problem, but now we’re back to differentiated CPU tech.

And given what TSX offers, that’s problematic. While the feature will only be adopted slowly as support trickles out into the market, crippling high-end support for it at any SKU only makes that process take longer. Intel may be banking on the fact that enthusiasts tend to upgrade quickly anyway, but if the company keeps to its rumored plan of only releasing every other CPU in a socketed form factor, it could take longer for enthusiasts who buy Haswell parts to upgrade to the next socketed flavor (Skylake).

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At Intel it seems that the markeeters thieves that almost caused Intel to go bankrupt with the whole Prescott/Tejas Pentium4 fraud inside the group got back in charge now..

And so the result is Haswell issues and the dumb insanity of forcing manufacturers to release CPUs soldered to the motherboards.

http://twitter.com/jerm1027 Jeremy Garcia

Steamroller, here I come. Admittedly, Haswell does sound like a better option for the mobile space, especially considering I don’t need proprietary drivers for Linux like the AMD options.

GatzLoc

AMD for graphics, 2500k for gaming (for now) phenom or actually, the one after bulldozer for everything else.

Tbh, nvm AMD for everything!

Bobby

2500k was one of the best processors ever made. It was right before Intel cheaped out and replaced their heat-conducting solder with bird poop.

Bobby

Extremetech looks more like an Intel puppet every day. Posting anti-AMD FUD and Intel-sponsored benchmarks and praise all over the place. Cherry picking at its finest.

You chose the SINGLE best benchmark for the entire Haswell series and attempted to call it “real world” performance. Utter lies. If you look close, you’ll see it’s actual SiSoft Sandra, one of the most popular synthetic suites in existence.

“OH BUT REAL WORLD CAN STILL BE BETTER”

TomsHardware confirmed it does around 5% better with most of their benchmarks.

FACT: Haswell graphics are already beat by Trinity and Llano.
FACT: Haswell’s main focus was mobile.
FACT: Haswell has the same thermal paste under the hood that Ivy Bridge did, making it a terribly overclockable heat monster
FACT: Steamroller’s main focus is performance.
FACT: Richland APUs are 20% faster than Trinity.
FACT: Kaveri (coming at the end of 2013) is HSA and a good deal stronger than Richland.

Intel seems to be pretty worried now that they have paid press at Anandtech and Extremetech.

disqus_LnZ8w1lW1X

Amen.

nightscout13

Can we wait for real world tests before passing this much judgement???

tgrech

Agreed, cherry picking, false information, and extreme rhetoric it seems to be getting more common every day here. I’ve seen from SemiAccurate(Has to be the least bias and most detailed source of tech news on the internet) that Intel basically attempt to pay them to cherry pick reviews, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these sites have fallen foul to this.
From the comments it seems fairly obvious most readers have caught onto this, maybe if you guys just do a wider view on some of these products(Without obvious cherry picking and bias rhetoric), your view count won’t start to plummet.

Joel Hruska

I showed one graph and wrote that the 7-12% perf improvement is in line with expectations.

Your inability to read does not constitute a bias on my part.

tgrech

One graph, exactly, all it shown was the large change in cache latency, would it not have been possible to get a balanced couple of graphs to show performance?
Even 7-12% seems optimistic, my calculations got closer to an average of 3-8%, possibly a little more on final silicon w/ drivers.
It brings us back to an article with Richland, your language was much less optimistic on the device then, and it’s set to have a bigger difference in performance/watt to Trinity than this does to IvyBridge.
It just doesn’t feel like this is completely balanced, I was considering buying a Haswell to replace the 3570K on my Intel system, but after reading the benchmarks it all seemed like a big let-down, having read only this article my opinion may have been different, because what you’re giving here, although maybe not bias, is certainly very shallow and missing many points of analysis.

GatzLoc

Honestly, 2500k and xspc 2.120 kit and forget about it for five years. Hit’s 4.5 ghz at stock volts. 5ghz at like 1.27 and could probably reach 5.6+ if I wanted to go to the maximum save voltage (Imo) of 1.4x.

Delta-t of like 2 degrees idle not much more than 3 or 4 on load. (have a few more rads, and a 7970 ocd in the but yea.. for 1080p I’m fine for a few years).

VirtualMark

Yeah my 2600k is running on air and easily hits 4.5Ghz. My system is totally silent as i use it for music production. Great CPU, the only think i don’t like is that it came with the integrated graphics. I’d rather not pay for that.

Joel Hruska

The difference between Richland as a follow-up to Trinity and Haswell as a follow-up to IVB is that AMD is far behind Intel in this area. For AMD, re-establishing competitive parity would require improving single-thread CPU performance by 50% or more.

Richland doesn’t do that. The chances that Steamroller *will* do that are negligible Again, not because Steamroller is a bad chip, but because jumps that large are incredibly hard to pull off without new architectures — which Steamroller isn’t.

That’s why I believe AMD is ultimately looking to Kabini / Kaveri to anchor its efforts in 2013.

Look at it this way:

1) Intel is unchallenged at the top of the x86 performance market. It creates a new solution with a 5-8% CPU performance gain and a 20-25% GPU performance gain. It has no challengers.

2) AMD is in very real danger of folding. It produces a product with a 5-8% CPU performance gain and a 20-25% GPU performance gain. These gains are not enough to improve AMD’s product margins.

It’s not biased to say that the #2 product isn’t good enough while the #1 product is. One of these companies has billions in cash and huge profit margins, while the other doesn’t.

As for analysis being a bit shallow, I don’t have hardware of my own to compare against or test.

I want Steamroller to be great. I want AMD to be competitive. Everyone loves an underdog, and there’s no story I’d enjoy writing more than “How AMD’s Steamroller came from behind, made huge performance gains.” That would be a *great* story.

But it has to happen first.

tgrech

Well, you say they are not competitive at the top(ish) end of x86, and until not too long ago I believed this as well, but if we go off Price/performance, AMD looks to be doing very well. Recent benchmarks with FX-8350s with the latest Windows hotfixes and drivers/Linux shows that it can often outperform a 3570K in most cases, even gaming(Considering most games arn’t optimised for so many threads/cores, and yet it is competitive which the much more expensive 3770K in Crysis 3 is quite an achievement.)
I’ve seen this myself playing ArmA2/DayZ on a 3570K and FX8350, the difference is noticeable when the game is set to use its full 7 threads(Both with HD7870-Tahiti LE).
Although Intel are well ahead in Performance/watt and top end performance, I think with the premiums they charge, they lose out on one of the most important points to many- Price/Performance.
If AMD can put Steamroller out with the performance boost expected(The problem with the architecture is obvious- it’s hard to see how they can mess this up) at the same price points, I think for enthusiasts at least, AMD could turn out on top.
Also in terms of iGPU, Richland should securely hold that title for a while, and the APUs should give best performance/watt for an all-round system for the foreseeable future.

Joel Hruska

Please show me these 3570K vs 8350 results. I’d be curious to see them.

The question isn’t “Will Steamroller be better than Piledriver?” The question is, “Will Steamroller be good enough to materially change AMD’s margins and competitive positioning?”

If you look at the history of CPU architectures, from both AMD and Intel, you’ll see that performance jumps *that* large simply don’t happen very often. A new core that delivers a 15% IPC improvement is a big deal. 25-30% is fabulous, particularly if it stays within the same TDP envelope.

The chances that Steamroller will be *that* strong are pretty small.

tgrech

It can’t completely be ruled out though, the bugs in Bulldozer were big, but easily fixable, fixing the cache alone could give a huge performance benefit to efficiency, combined with the manufacture shrink and possible inclusion of resonant clock meshing, 30% doesn’t sound completely crazy. Since it uses a tried and tested, but still smaller manufacture process as well, I doubt cost will change much, meaning cost/performance will likely securely stay with AMD, and the performance/watt gap won’t be nearly as big.

andrey

Joel steamroller is not a completely new architecture is based on bulldozer but it is on 28nm and AMD made a lot of changes that simple weren’t possible on 32nm because they lacked space. They manage a healthy jump with Vishera with minor improvements and I don’t see any reason why the can’t pull the same thing with Steamroller maybe even a bigger jump.
An FX 8450 that matches the i7 3770 in games and delivers a better multithread performance for 200-230$ max will be a win in my book even is is not as fast as Haswell i7.

Joel Hruska

“An FX 8450 that matches the i7 3770 in games and delivers a better multithread performance for 200-230$ max will be a win in my book even is is not as fast as Haswell i7.”

That’d be fabulous. I’d be jumping up and down.

I’ve used Cinebench 11.5 to illustrate this before. If you break down single-thread performance in CB11.5 and compare across Intel and AMD architectures, the MHz to score ratio looks something like this (I am quoting from memory):

Westmere: 4.15
Sandy Bridge: 4.25
Ivy Bridge: 4.37

For AMD, the ratio looks like this:
Thuban: 3.06

Llano: 3.03

Bulldozer: 2.5
Piledriver: 2.5

That ratio describes *why* AMD has had such trouble with Bulldozer/Piledriver. Intel chips are 1.74x faster than AMD chips at the same clock. That makes it almost impossible for AMD to excel in multi-threaded scenarios — the single-thread performance gap is just too big.

The changes Piledriver needs aren’t as simple as cache tweaks. Research into the chip’s performance has made this clear. Better cache latency is *part* of the problem, but it’s not the primary driver.

There are things Steamroller does that imply it *will* fix some of these problems. The implication is that the core has two discrete front ends, which means it’ll share less core logic and issue more commands per cycle. That’s a huge deal. But it’s not a magic bullet, either.

Here’s the best way to understand AMD’s product lineup, starting with Bulldozer:

Steamroller will tell us if Bulldozer can be fixed. That’s the bottom line.

tgrech

I think an increase in clocks is certainly possible, if performance/watt is improved(Which is very likely), AMD will likely squeeze everything they can out of it in the top end model, how high I don’t know, but I’d expect at least a couple of hundred Mhz.

Joel Hruska

“I’d expect at least a couple of hundred Mhz.”

Which, unfortunately, is pretty much irrelevant in this context. Piledriver’s clock speed was ~10% higher than Bulldozer’s at base frequency. Just as important, it was able to spend significantly more time at peak Turbo within TDP limits.

Let’s say Steamroller picks up another 400MHz. That’s at the top of what I’d expect, but I’ll give it to you. That’s about an 8% clock boost. Since clock frequency almost never scales perfectly against performance, you’re looking at 5-6% more performance.

Now, is that an improvement? Of course it is. But looking at the single-thread figures, it’s nothing like enough. And since TDP increases as a function of voltage squared * frequency, it’s unlikely that AMD will crank the clocks that much higher.

If *I* was AMD, I wouldn’t bet on higher clocks from Steamroller. I’d focus on efficiency and performance-per-clock instead.

tgrech

I’d expect another improvement with turbo, presuming it’ll use the new temperature based system, also the Resonant Clock Mesh could possibly give higher clocks(Although the benefits are smaller when this high).
A bit off topic, but I think the reliance on benchmarks now is a bit heavy, a developer recently said
“Haswell is another Intel (product). They always promise, and never deliver. It is not about performance in a synthetic (benchmark) it is about (that) they don’t support essential features we need and don’t need to worry about compatibility on (our) code. Fusion, Radeon and GeForce have it all covered and if we have issues they resolve them or work (with us). Forget it they live in a mobile world right now.”
I guess this is a call for sites like this(I know in this case, those were Tomshardware benches) to use some more real life performance in future, possibly dedicated gaming benchmarks, as this is where the whole chip is tested(The North/Southbridge can have a huge effect on end performance if it ends up throttling other parts or working inefficiently.)

Joel Hruska

From the perspective of someone who has done a *lot* of benchmarking over the past 13 years, such generalized statements don’t hold much water.

Radeon and GeForce *dont’* have Fusion “covered.” AMD has a slow ramp towards combining CPU and GPU workspaces, but Nvidia doesn’t. If he was referring to OpenCL, Haswell, AMD, and NV all support it.

You call for more real-world benchmarks. That’s what I *use*. Any time I look at CPU performance, I use tools that’ve been proven to work and that offer steady comparative figures across generations. If I test a game, I test it at detail settings that make sense — not 640×480 with all details minimized. True, I won’t crank settings up *all the way* until the GPU is the only bottleneck, but I’ll test a product at settings that reflect the way people play.

If there are particular games or applications you’d like to see tested, you are welcome to make suggestions. I’m always open to new test ideas.

tgrech

Since you mention it, I think ArmA2 would be good to test (Not sure about ArmA3 Alpha so far) the CPU when the correct settings are used. It’s one of the only games I know that can use 7 threads(And so makes use of 8+ thread/core CPUs), and so I presume it would give better overall performance than the common dual core optimised games. It’s quite CPU heavy, has benchmark situations included, and I believe there is a free Lite version that can be used with these benchmarks.
In terms of GPU, from what I remember you don’t use 1440p in banchmarks. I think now it’s becoming a lot more common, and performance can go crazy at higher resolutions(I seen a HD7870 beat a Titan in a 5760×1080 benchmark at one point(On Tomshardware if I remember correctly)), and so it does become a worry not just to whether a GPU is fast, but whether its bottlenecked by bandwidth easily(And its probably better to use higher res than multi-screen, ti avoid differences in Eyefinity and its NVidia counterpart).

It’s not necessary of course, especially if it’s a lot of hassle, but it’d be nice to see some more people doing 1440p benchmarks by now.

Joel Hruska

I’m assuming you mean an HD 7970 vs. Titan, and from my own article, I’d love to know what game *that* was in. Even in DiRT 3 (which is pretty heavily AMD-friendly), Titan is faster. The bigger point in DiRT 3 is that you don’t need a GTX Titan to drive 3 monitors at nice frame rates.

Testing in 1440p is limited by the resolution of the displays I have on hand, honestly. I did quite a bit of research for the 5760×1080 article we published a few weeks back — general opinion from the Widescreen Gaming Forum was that NV and AMD are generally equal these days as far as the quality of their multi-monitor support.

I will look into ARMA 2. I’d wait on ARMA 3 until the engine is finalized.

tgrech

It was TechpowerUp doing Sleeping Dogs(A quite AMD optimised game), and yes, to my amazement and yours, I did actually mean HD7870, and by a 33% difference. Presumably at least partially driver issues, but from what I’ve heard it wouldn;t be the first time NVidia had bandwidth problems.http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan/20.html

I thought that would be what limited most sites(That they don’t have a 1440p monitor on hand), I guess you could synthesize a 1440p monitor by running x4 720p monitors if there generally is no difference in the multi screen tech, but I guess it would be pointless if there really isn’t that many people on 1440p yet.

Joel Hruska

That’s a driver issue or game engine problem, guaranteed. I can show you how I know.

Look at the first three results. This game favors AMD, sure — but we see a few important facts.

1) The GTX 680 is beaten by the GTX 590. That means RAM isn’t the critical factor here — if it was, a single GPU with 2GB of RAM would beat a pair of GPUs with 1.5GB each.

2) AMD wins the first three results by roughly the same margin. This is what we expect.

3) Even at 2560×1600, the cards keep to the same pattern.

Then, we hit 5760×1080, and everything goes to crap — but in some very odd ways.

If the problem was sheer memory bandwidth *or* RAM amount, the GTX 690 wouldn’t outperform the GTX Titan. Titan’s memory bandwidth is higher. Remember, in an SLI configuration, RAM use is *duplicated* across both GPUs. You don’t have 4GB of RAM in a GTX 690, you’ve got 2x2GB.

The fact that the Titan is beaten by the 690 tells us that something isn’t working properly. It’s underscored by the HD 7870 results. There’s no intrinsic reason for the HD 7870 to suddenly be beating cards that were beating it in every previous resolution — particularly when we’ve just activated a triple-monitor gaming solution.

Occam’s Razor applies. The simplest explanation is that there’s a problem with NV’s Surround gaming in Sleeping Dogs.

http://www.facebook.com/WhoAreYouWhatAreYouDoingHere Chris Shakal

Though I’m not a huge fan of AMD, it’s good to see AMD giving Intel a run for it’s money. Competition is always good.

Phil

FACT: It is impossible for anyone to write about anything here without someone yelling like this.

You’d do well to provide a good argument and engage in some dialogue rather than froth at the mouth because you suspect bias.

VirtualMark

AMD has been lagging behind Intel for years now. I think your knowledge is out of date!

REAL WORLD performance. REAL WORLD resolutions. REAL WORLD logic. None of that “Starcraft II at 800×600 with AA off and 2x filtering” crap.

Compared side by side in benchmarks that Intel had no hand in influencing, you’ll see that AMD is actually more competitive than what TomsHardware and Anandtech want you to think.

You may recognize this guy from TigerTV long ago, he created his own channel and does that now.

VirtualMark

You do realise that the FX 8350 is an 8 core running at 5Ghz? The i7 is a quad core running at 4.5Ghz.

tgrech

Not really an 8-core, more a quad core with efficient hyper threading(Basically the same as an i7). FX8350 also runs at 4Ghz, not 5.
That’s a very accurate representation of real world experience, I can confirm it myself on Arma2 that the gap is big.

VirtualMark

Hi, thanks for joining the discussion. Perhaps before making incorrect and ignorant statements, you should watch the video we are talking about.

The FX 8350 was overclocked, as was the i7. But thanks for your input.

Now I would invite you to use the popular search engine “Google” and type in the phrase “FX 8350″. Do a bit of research, then come back and tell me how many cores it has again.

Thanks.

tgrech

You did not specify whether you were referring to the video, I know it’s over clocked in the video, don’t flame me because your bad wording. Also, I think you’ll find it has 8 integer cores, not actual cores, it has the resources of 4 cores(Known as modules in Bulldozer architecture), with each split into two threads(Just like hyper threading). Saying an FX-8350 as 8 full cores is idiotic, it’s like saying cutting an orange in half gives you two oranges.

VirtualMark

It says on the top of my comment who I was replying to. Don’t blame me for your ignorance of how the site works. When you click the reply button, you do not need to specify who you are replying to in your comment. Rudimentary.

I could be wrong tho. Do you have any proof that it’s a quad core? Because the rest of the world seems to think it’s 8, I’ll go along with them for now, thanks.

tgrech

I know who you were replying to, and I know how the Disqus system works, but you still did not specify whether you were referring to the general spec, or the video. On the subject of 8-cores, you’re just reading the marketing rubbish, 8 cores sounds a lot better than 4 cores with SMT, doesn’t it?.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)#BULLDOZER_Core_.28aka_Module.29 “a single core processor that has the SMT ability, which can create a dual threads processor but with the power of one (each thread shares the resources of the core with the other thread).”
You’ll notice most of the time bulldozer CPUs are mentioned, many people say the module count rather than the “core” count, this is because the “cores”, are not really cores at all. In practice, an FX8350 is no more than a quad core with hyperthreading(That’s a simple description, if you want more in-depth, read up on it).

VirtualMark

You butted in on a conversation, it was your stupidity that is to blame. Learn to read comments properly – you claim to know how Disqus works yet the evidence points to the contrary.

Notice the FX 8350 says 8 CORES. Print it off and hang it on your wall to remind yourself of how stupid you are.

If you want to argue further – take it up with AMD. They are describing their processors as 8 cores, not me. And as a sane person, I assume that AMD know more about their own processors than we do.

Thanks.

tgrech

I didn’t “but in” to a conversation, I joined it, if you don’t like the way the internet works, don’t use it, you can’t have private conversations in a comment section.
I don’t think you understand what marketing is, of course AMD and the sites that SELL the product are going to say it’s an 8 core, but that is far from the full story. AMD can call it an 8-core all they want, but in reality it’s far from it. I don’t understand your logic in this at all, so now company marketing means more to you than scientific fact? Look at the architecture floor plans yourself if you want to, you don’t need to be an engineer to understand it(But it certainly helps).

VirtualMark

Your stupidity is growing tiresome. Now you’re arguing about a term I used.

Like I said, if you don’t like the way AMD describe their processors, take it up with them. I have nothing more to say to you.

tgrech

What are you talking about? You sound more and more like a child every comment, you base your knowledge on marketing, you ignore scientific fact, you make juvenile comments, and now you’re use ad hominems after I used facts to prove my point. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a 14 year old kid acting big on the internet after some of the stuff you say.
I clearly wasn’t arguing over the term you used, I was pointing out that you were wrong for thinking you can privately chat in the comments section, if you didn’t want anyone else to see or comment, then talk in private, it’s common sense.

Bobby

Also almost half the price. AMD’s cores are smaller, deal with it.

Also, the fact that you even dragged GHz into this argument shows you know nothing about processors. Go back to 2006.

VirtualMark

Stupid person – Ghz is a measure of clock speed. Since the AMD has double the cores and runs at a higher rate, we can conclude that they do less work per cycle than the Intel. Deal with it.

tgrech

Wait, significant performance boost? TomsHardware said it was 3-8% overall, not sure what you class as significant.

VirtualMark

Yeah it looks pretty disappointing as far as performance goes, although the integrated graphics will be better. I hate integrated graphics tho!

They did say they’re focusing on power savings this generation so it should be a good CPU for laptops. That’s the main reason i’m holding out, i like the idea of a cool quiet laptop than i can run on battery for a few hours.

VirtualMark

Yeah it looks pretty disappointing as far as performance goes, although the integrated graphics will be better. I hate integrated graphics tho!

They did say they’re focusing on power savings this generation so it should be a good CPU for laptops. That’s the main reason i’m holding out, i like the idea of a cool quiet laptop than i can run on battery for a few hours.

some_guy_said

Having experienced two ivy bridge i5s (Desktop and mobile) I’m more interested in what kind of performance/tdp/power usage we have in the mobile/laptop variants.

I mean, really, rote performance increases are not all that necessary at the moment in the desktop arena – unless they have some kind of miracle graphics blowout. my desktop chip has about 50% processing overhead (rarely maxing any core ever), and I still need a graphics card to really play newer games. Even with (hypothetical) 50% increases in both graphics and processing, my experience would change very little…

James Tolson

Intel have to be careful that they don’t fall down a hole and give AMD an edge.. AMD made a big gamble with bulldozer making a CPU that outperforms intel on workload in highend server/workstation enviroments but losing a foothold in the general purpose market to put it another way AMD made a better CPU and edge their bets on it and lost to the cruel world of bad journalism on back handers from intel (probably) and the gaming world using FPS gaming benchmarks to rubbish the product..

to re phrase that (in english), imagine a quarry, the company mining the quarry use sports cars to move dirt/ore from the base to the top (workload). 2 companies make the sports car’s amd and intel, however a point is reached that sports cars cannot get much faster or better and one of the car companies AMD decide to make a big truck.. well call it the bulldozer truck (lol).. now the truck way outperforms the intel sports cars on productivity over time because it moves all more dirt/ore in one load, however it gets to the top slower.. now that should not matter, and that is AMD banked on.. and in the real world they are right.. however the nievity and cruelty of the market and the not so clever end customer only see’s how fast the vehicle gets to top? only people serious about computers (and have a brain) can see the value in bulldozer ..

intel know this and do not want to make the same gamble, they want to try and muscle in on a market amd are doing well in, but not to compete with AMD but to compete with ARM as right the mobile computing market is exploding and the desktop pc market has stalled (at least for the time being)…

i think some already said ROLL on STEAMROLLER that is wot ill get :-)

GatzLoc

Yup, yup I want amd to improve bulldozer a bit because I have a phenom ii waiting and begging for an upgrade.

Want a bit lower TDP so I can hit 5 ghz on it easily. :D

Bobby

Look at Steamroller. It’s shrinking to 28nm, getting 2x the core decoding speed, a shared bank of dynamically resizing L2 cache, and a few other things.

If piledriver already wins, I cant wait to see how nicely Steamroller crushes Haswell.

matt_helm

Wow, I’m really confused about Haswell. About 6 months ago, people were telling me the graphics in it would blow EVERYTHING out of the water. You know, like no one would ever buy a graphics card again. Now we’re seeing a 10% improvement over the HD4000, which never came close to Llano, much less Trinity, yet web sites are praising it like the second coming!!!

Get a life, Intel can’t do everything right, and I’d never assume they can do “real” video at all. I’m not saying they can’t make CPUs, but Intel, learn a lesson, let the real GPU makers handle the video.

I agree – i hate the fact that i have to pay for a shitty integrated graphics chip when i buy an i7 CPU! I’d rather have more cache or a faster clock speed.

I can understand them doing it on the low end i3. But who buys an i7 and uses integrated graphics?

http://www.facebook.com/mgsowers Matthew Sowers

Thats why I plan on using Xeon processor

Joel Hruska

“Wow, I’m really confused about Haswell. About 6 months ago, people were telling me the graphics in it would blow EVERYTHING out of the water. You know, like no one would ever buy a graphics card again.”

I have no idea who wrote that. The improvement over HD 4000 in desktop looks to be ~20-25% overall. Possibly higher with tuned drivers.

The improvements in mobile parts will be significantly higher, given that GT3 packs 2x the function units of GT2, even if those units run at a lower clock speed. But no, the idea that no one would ever buy a dGPU again is ridiculous.

Bobby

You’re confused because you trusted Intel. Ivy Bridge was exaggerated with lies (and still did terribly) and Haswell is doing the same. Remember when Intel compared a GTX 650 with Haswell graphics? They had a frame limiter on both machines and both were on low settings. The Haswell APPEARED to be close to the 650 for one reason: both were limited to a certain FPS. The 650 pretty much stuck with it, but the haswell was falling behind.

Here’s what these graphs are demonstrating: The Xeon family crushes Opteron in MS SQL Server as far as IPC (instructions per clock cycle). It’s no mistake that the branch misprediction ratio for Opteron is 1.53x as bad as the Xeon’s.

Clearly it’s not the only factor in play — the Xeon’s are far faster than Bulldozer/Piledriver in Cinebench 11.5, despite slightly *better* performance from BD in branch prediction. Nevertheless, what these graphs show is that branch prediction performance can matter a lot as far as total CPU perf is concerned.

I’ll give you a different example. If you recall, Intel’s P4 Prescott was a disaster. One of the reasons *why* it was such a lousy processor is that, in the event of a branch predict, it took 33 clock cycles to flush and refill the pipeline.

Intel’s Dothan, released at the same time, was hailed an efficient, great processor. What most people don’t realize is that Dothan and Prescott used the same branch prediction unit. In the case of Xeon, Intel has an additional instruction cache that reduces the penalty of a pipeline flush from ~17 cycles to 12-14 cycles. AMD has no such animal in Piledriver.

This means AMD is penalized coming and going. Piledriver has to refill its pipeline more often than an equivalent Intel CPU and it takes more clock cycles to do each refill.

How much this penalizes Piledriver depends on the workload. What I’d suggest, as a general consideration, is that the improvements to PD’s branch predictor weren’t enough to completely offset the impact of the longer pipeline in all cases.

VirtualMark

Thanks for the info – you’re right I don’t really understand branch prediction. I was trying to think how you can devote processing to working out the likely result of the processing, if you know what I mean. I know they work else they wouldn’t be on there, it just seems a strange concept to me.

Yeah, I’ve read a few articles on here about the Pentium 4, and how the Core 2 Duo has a shorter pipeline and took less cycles to do the same workload.

The only thing I don’t really get is how they can continue to improve prediction. Does it actually get more accurate with each generation?

Joel Hruska

VirtualMark,

That’s a reallllly complex question. Does it get better? Yes. How much do those improvements matter? Depends on what you mean.

For example: We know Intel’s next-generation Atom at 22nm is an out-of-order execution core. That means it’ll need a much more complex branch prediction unit than anything Atom used. It’s absolutely possible that one of the reasons Intel waited to move to a more advanced Atom core is because they were working on squeezing a really effective branch prediction unit into a tiny, low-power chip.

In that context, improvements to the branch predictor really matter. Even a mobile chip with a 17W TDP has 3x the TDP range of a tablet-oriented Atom solution. That means it’s a lot more important to power optimize everything.

I expect Haswell’s branch prediction unit to be a small improvement over the current. Intel hasn’t disclosed those improvements yet. AMD has more potential for gain here — their units simply aren’t as good, so there’s more ground to make up.

DDG4005

Since I’ve already upgraded my boxes with Ivy Bridge-based CPUs I’m going to pass on Haswell but hopefully Intel will tweak the chip a but more before it drops in June.

http://www.facebook.com/tudd.bar.7 Tudd Bar

lool… what is significant? your payment from Intel to beissued the article or the only 10% boost of CPU ?

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